Day 28: MIT Make in India: The Final Blog

Day 28: MIT Make in India

The day kinda just blurred but at 3:30am we (Me, Chingy, Aishwarya, Dhruv, Mayank, Swappy, and Jaspreet) got ready to go to leave Jaspreet and go to the temple and such. Unfortunately all I had was the kurthi I wore for my birthday… The boys took forever. 

aww don't we look cute

oh hey dhruv...

here take the photo again for good measure

Hum Hindu hain

We got on the bus and left Jaspreet at the airport first (apparently he met Daivon there!). Another good friend gone.

Then we rest of set us off for the temple in Trivandum (they all still trying to get me to speak in Hindi, a lost cause). It was beautifully mind-blowing. I couldn’t really comprehend it all. It was apparently the richest temple in the world as well. We snuck in Chingy (“main assam se hoon"), and all had to wear dhotis (Swapnil cannot tie one correctly for his life). We walked around, admiring it. 

Then we sat down waiting for darshan. In that time, I ended up falling asleep but Dhruv woke us up in time for what was about to happen. We literally got pushed and shoved and got incredibly close to each other (literally). True team bonding is trying to stay together and help each other not get trampled in the temple. We somehow made it to where the murti was in one piece, which I only unfortunately got to see the hand. It was pouring the entire time as well, though the rain looked really nice falling. Except for the fact that my kurta was a bit see through, but whatever. 

After darshan, we received prashad of dal chawal and then left the area. It was an interesting experience. They all had coffee/tea and vada outside, and then of course we had to have a photo session in our dhotis. (the guys didn’t want their upper bodies posted in public, so no photos of that, sorry girls.) 

Kurthi and dhoti and temple

Dhoti selfie

Then it was time for me to go to the airport to catch my flight. We took the bus to the airport, and I got off (everyone else did too to leave me) and saw that my flight wasn’t on the board… Uh. We asked and realized this was the international terminal. I thought it was too good looking of a terminal. 

Everyone got back on the bus and then we went to the domestic terminal. It was actually pretty far away, probably a 10 minutes drive and I probably couldn’t have made it walking. I gotta say thanks to all my good friends that stayed with me and made sure I made it. When we reached, I was like yup that looks more like it. They left me right at the entrance and we said our goodbyes. It was officially, I was leaving and now they would never hear me speak Hindi (besides the time they chased me while I spoke on the phone). 

Airport was exactly how I remembered it. Nothingness. But whatever. At least I was there safely. I tried to write the blog at the airport, but I kept falling asleep and wrote gibberish. Excerpt here:

"nd I thought oaring  on thing in false weeks … All in all the templle wa2. 

We took some lies we go obot@ Folliwng a mssin esik After we reached the temple, we all got were no currently watering. There was 5 apps in serious, it makes sense why the numbers were like that…."

Yeah…I decided it was time to put up my laptop and properly nap…until I woke up and saw that the entire gate was completely empty. Oh crap. I ran to the gate in my t-shirt and pyjami style and quickly got on the place. “You are the last passenger” and they closed the door behind me. Oops… Yeah that I almost missed. And probably had the whole plane hating me. Just this morning my mother had told me not to fall asleep at the airport…

I made it back to Delhi, the land of clean water, “fresh air”, and gol gappe. I slept a ton. Of course, the dal that Mami had made was urhur ki dal…right after I told her I refuse to eat sambar again. But it was delicious anyway. 

Well this is my last blog (a few days delayed due to my laziness and tiredness). I am really going to miss everyone, though. All the amazing people I met that are the smartest and some of the greatest friends. Although we only spent 3 week together, we got close enough to be brother and sister (some a little more??). Have to say thanks to MIT and Raj for giving me this opportunity. Yes, I gained the confidence to innovate and make anything. I gained the skills to create a business. But most importantly, I gained friends that I will never forget. It’s sad going from living and laughing with 20 of your best friends for a month and then going back home. Now our friendships will just be through the occasional social media interaction, but that’s ok. Those three weeks were great. Thanks again, everyone. 

Day 27: MIT Make in India

Day 27: MIT Make in India

So Aish and I went to sleep at about 5:45am…and then I got up at 8:30am. Yay. At least I finally shaved. Let’s not talk about how long it’s been since I washed my hair. In my defense, the bathroom doesn’t have light. We would still have a long, rough day ahead of us. In other news, I want to ride the Big Flipper. 

Aish had some trouble waking up and didn’t end up waking until 11am. I had long before left to the lab, but before I even stepped out of the house, our two favorite camera guys had finally caught me that I didn’t do my interview yet. Darn. After so much skillful evasion. 

I came back to do the interview, and I gave pretty crappy, brief, horrible answers. I honestly could not come up with anything after the night. They kept laughing because I wasn’t really cooperating. Oh well. 

I returned after that swell interview, and tried to work on the finance spreadsheet, business plan, and presentation. I ate a quick lunch as finally more people trickled in. 

Our team kept working on the product and the presentation stuff, and I learned that Raj has the same choice in music as me when it comes to Indian oldies. All the Kishore Kumar, please. 

I am really curious who took pictures of me sleeping on the chairs...those are dangerous.

Then as the day became slower and less productive, Soapnil and Jassi recruited me unknowingly and made me sit down and write their business plan. These people…we even had our business plan before that. I tried to help them and kinda kept bouncing around. Time was getting nearer and nearer to the presentations. Our shark trash can’s sensor kept screwing up and we would continuously tried to move the potentiometer, but electronics have a mind of their own. Occasionally it would work. We just hoped when the people come to see the demo, it would be that occasion. 

Just as Forest, Duncan, and I came back from the corner store (where we had rather confusing interaction with the store lady), the government officials of Kerala had arrived and it was time to give demos. Aishwarya had come out from the sick death and spoke beautifully about our product that was trash. I was dying of cough and lack of water meanwhile. I finally got some water, and then it was time for the actual presentations. I was so dead that I ended up sleeping through most of them, but they were great! Our was good too. Prezi here: https://prezi.com/bugheeud2jl4/t-zero-trash-can/. I managed not to cough through the presentation. 

Soap.

I think it was beautiful. For trash.

Raj continued his talking and we all got certificates for participating in this workshop. Of course, this led to a photo session. I called my dad, and of course Swapnil came and sat down in hopes to hear my elusive Hindi. He soon realized, much to his disappointment, that I speak to my parents in English. Nice try. 

We had dinner and I found out the great news that one of the people who had come gave the soap people 25 lakhs funding! So proud of them. Mayank then made a MIT Make in India Whatsapp (timing being on the last day made sense totally). We all had a Whatsapp session that we were all in the same room but messaging out to each other. Titan really wanted to bathe in all 25 lakhs. I just wanted light in the bathroom. So I can at least see the dolla dolla bills. 

Unfortunately it was time to come back to reality and start packing for the rough morning. Of course, my distractions were too great as usual. I found American water in my suitcase! I then finally washed my hair using a torch as the light. It was great. 

After I was finally possibly ready to go back to Delhi (because I totally wasn’t counting down the days), I went back to the lab where they were hanging out and mostly playing carrom. Jaspreet tried to make me do carrom well, but I was just not feeling it. Also, Just want to say once again that Swapnil sucks at carrom. Aaayaaa Chingy. The Forest method also seems to work well (whenever he doesn’t want the person to make the shot, he just touches them with his finger and makes the sizzling noise. It actually works. 

It was my last night in Kerala and I was too tired for life. It’s funny, though. I felt I came full circle in good ol’ Chirayinkeezhu. When I came on the first day, the first thing I did was play carrom. Now on the last day, the last thing I did was play carrom. No improvement in skills though. 

In about two hours, it would be time to leave...

Day 26: MIT Make in India

Day 26: MIT Make in India

I had been sleeping a beautiful sleep on Kristin’s bed until I woke up to a noise. Something told me I should check the time, to, you know, then i decided to check the time and saw that it was 10:30. I had slept through my 8am alarm. There’s a first time of everything.

Of course I freaked and so quickly showered. And then I walked outside and saw everyone so casually conversing over breakfast… I coulda shaved, man. 

I went over to the fab lab and i don’t actually remember what I did. I think I started working on the shark. Seems legit. 

I quickly ate lunch. And I came back to continue working. The servo had been moving weirdly for a few days now, and I couldn’t figure out why. Forest and I had Raj come look at it and everything. It really just wouldn’t stop twitching. After so much messing with the code, we figured out that it was me who had accidentally put the power at 3 volts instead of 5 volts. This is why I'm 6-3 and not 6-2, my friends. 

Finally once that was resolved, we worked on making the actual electronics component smaller. We located a smaller breadboard and were planning to use a battery to power the trash can. After many failed efforts and again Raj’s help, we realized that the circuit required more current than the batteries could provide. We ended up having to use a USB battery. Good enough to stick inside a trash can for now. 

Forest began to paint the trash can body with blue paint that we barely had enough of. We also didn’t have paintbrushes so we had to use the ratchet solution of folding paper into paintbrushes… It was pretty sad. I began to help too, making a fin and painting as well. Forest even put water into the paint when we were getting extremely low. He has truly learned the Indian way. 

While the paint dried, Aishwarya, Forest, Duncan, and I went to the corner store to buy food. and mango juice 5ever. Unfortunately only half the trash can turned out somewhat decent, but Forest had already made a thing to print out that said trash we could stick on the crappy part. Now our trash can looks beautiful. 

Another funny thing is how many prototypes Forest made of this shark trash can lid. 3D printed, paper, cardboard, plastic, styrofoam. I told him this is true materials science. 

Now I would like to take a moment to pay respect to all those that have been victimized by Aishwarya and her Facebook postings on their wall about sambar and idli and marriage and god knows what. RIP to their reputations. So far I have been spared…one day to go... 

Dat shoulder doe.

Mehndi laga ke rakhna. Fevicol se.

The brochure I helped make for the soap team came in, and unfortunately it looked kind of bad thanks to the printer and the size of paper and such. I tried to make do with it, but in the end, we decided to reprint later. 

Dinner I came too late for. Awesome. I called my family in India, and of course, Swapnil had to walk by and realize I was speaking in Hindi. I do not understand their obsession with my Hindi, but he wouldn’t leave. I tried walking here and there and some hitting, but dang man. Swapnil finally left back to making soap with Jaspreet and Vignesh as the local women of Kerala they were. But I looked back and saw Jaspreet looking at me. He began to walk toward me. I ran, still on the phone with Maji. Like, this is ridiculous bro. I half expected Jaspreet to not run and follow me but I looked back and saw him. I’m perfectly fine, Maji! Then he came to where I was and started speaking and it had reached the point where I told Maji to give me a minute, so I could say something to him. “Is there someone talking to you?” …”oh Maji yes sorry it was just my friend…” Y’all suck. 

I came back, finally finished the call without too much further running. Raj wanted us to present our presentation and business plan, so we put our presentation up on the projector and walked him through it. He gave us a lot of feedback of what we needed to fix and laughed a bit at our numbers… It’s hard to pick between profit and reality. 

We tried to completely fix the shark by making the mechanical and electrical aspects stuck onto the trash can and not move. It was all working, just kinda looked…well like trash. Ratchet Solutions, Inc. 

Forest had located a rather large spider on the ceiling of the room and decided it was a fantastic idea to throw paper at it because he “wanted to see it in action.” After many, many tries of barely touching the spider, who actually gave nothing, Forest got the broom and hit it down. It landed on the ground and of course, Ching-Ching scurried out of the room, Aish was on the chair, and I too decided being in this room wasn’t the best idea. Forest managed to get the spider by the broom and then between paper and cup. “Ching-Ching, catch!” Why man. Manoj also told how he had many even larger spiders that he used to bathe with when he was younger at his home. How pleasant. 

Anyways, we tried to get our trash together by the use of tape and paper and such. Raj came in and asked us, “is it called Sharky or Trashy?” I’ll try not to take that as an insult. Unintended. But Sharky was offended. 

Random sign I found...can't say it completely fits.

Vignesh came in to say goodbye as he was leaving for tomorrow morning and went in for a hug and he knocks over the freaking shark that we worked so hard and getting to look almost like a thing. I almost cried. We tried to put it back together but now it was just laughable. I almost cried because I was just laughing too hard. We finally got a decent hug, though. And the shark was more or less okay. 

Now Aishwarya and I are staying up late (it’s 4:36am) to work on the business plan and finance spreadsheet…oh progress please come soon. And bring us food. Can't wait to show everything to VIPs tomorrow. Or today rather. 

We all look so different...visit our website...buy trash cans...

Random thoughts past 4am…it’s so sad to think all the amazing people I have gotten close to will now just dwindle down to the friendship level of occasionally liking one’s post on Facebook.

We went to sleep at about 5:45am...

Day 25: MIT Make in India

Day 25: MIT Make in India

When you wake up after a long night in the lab wrapping soaps with cloth, all you want is a hot shower on a bright sunny day. Instead I still have no light in the bathroom and the shower was a trickle. Life’s great. 

On the bright side, the shark was finished printing and we put it on the shark. Aishwarya, Forest, and I also made the pitch (not the presentation) to Raj for our product and company. We got some good feedback, and Aishwarya edited the pitch. Now’s it’s perfect. If only we had a legit product...

Then I started helping the soap people who had their pitch to the hotel association today because it was coming up soon and I honestly didn’t have that much to do. Or least that I wanted to do. I began remaking the brochure, which it turns out Vignesh was doing the same. Finally we came together after lunch and merged our thoughts and edits into the final brochure which hopefully turned out ok. Soap is hard. Everyone tried to help out. They had to come up with questions that they could expect and be able to answer them well and on the spot. I got a bit bored and made this!

Raj's picture of me and Vignesh and the product of my boredom

Then they began working on the pitch and arguing who would pitch it and how. I think they got someone somehow… And somehow it’s Aishwarya who isn’t even on the soap team… Good job, guys. 

It was soon time to go to the hotel in Trivandrum on the party bus, but it was almost time to watch the NASA mission pass Pluto after going for nine years! Duncan and I were ready. It was literally about 19 minutes away and everyone was getting ready to leave. We were trying to figure out ways to stall so that we could somehow watch it. We rebelled and took out the laptop and began streaming. This was important, man. 

We managed to stall and watch it while sitting on the bus in front of the house. It was quite anti-climatic. We reached the hotel playing Aishwarya’s party music. There were a ton of hawks/crows/bird things flying around. Titan was going to leave soon on her flight to Indonesia and she was hungry. There was Baskin Robbins right there in the hotel and we were slowly inching toward it. Finally we made it there and ate fairly delicious ice cream. I also arm wrestled Chingy and Titan (who makes weird noises and poses while wrestling). Wow I was weak. I think the pitch had gone well…there was some interest shown in the soaps that I so beautifully cut and packed. 

Gonna miss you, Titan!

Finally we went inside the hotel’s restaurant and only ordered “light appetizers.” So basically we ordered a ton of snacks for our vegetarian table and shared it all using the spinning thing on the table, which was fun and could also be used to tease. I also heard Dhruv’s life stories about how he hates girls… There was more, but that was interesting. 

Titan then left…such sadness. SEE YOU SEPTEMBER 9TH THELONIOUS MONKFISH. I just realized I have been saying the restaurant name wrong this whole time. Oops. Thanks, Google. 

We then went to the Punjabi Dhaba, much to Jaspreet’s happiness. We were greeted with a dhol! It was hilarious. And a very beautiful place. We got the party room, because party as usual. THEN WE SAW THE CHAAT AND GOL GAPPE. My life was made right there. 

Dhol greeter...also turned out to be the chaat guy.

Dhaba Project.

GOL GAPPE. I shamelessly drank all the water. Forget my throat.

This is perfect. His mumma will be so proud.

Playing the dhol

He actually doesn't know how. Unacceptable.

Dancing to dhol.

We ordered a ton of food as usual, lots of chaat, gol gappe, and sabjis that everyone shared. Felt really good eating North Indian food. There was dancing and playing of the dhol was well. Then party bus on the way back, as always. And Forest's dance. 

Party karoo raat mein. 

Day 24: MIT Make in India

Day 24: MIT Make in India

In the morning, I dragged my feet over to the lab and began to finish work on the finance and business presentation. We also cleaned up a bit around the lab. After lunch Forest and I went to the plastic warehouse, which is literally just a giant space with plastic everything. Plastic chairs, plastic dustbins, plastic buckets, plastic pitchers, I was literally wading in plastic. We couldn’t really find any decent plastic, so we just got two boxes. Then poor Forest had to cut the plastic boxes (which was impossible, I tried for like two seconds and failed miserably and quit) and make them into another shark prototype. While he did that I rebuilt the circuit by finding all the pieces elsewhere and put together the code for the shark. It worked! And the plastic shark was interesting as well. Now everything was done except for the mechanical aspect of the shark mouth that was just slightly not fitting with the servo. 

After that, I played some carrom. I suck. But still will say better than Swapnil (I am only saying this because I want him to read this and become really angry like last time haha this is for hanging me upside down won’t forgive you). I did happen to destroy Titan, Ching-Ching, and Duncan though. 

We also visited the Sarkara temple again. And then I ate ice cream thanks to Titan! Butterscotch with pista…it was delicious…and great for my throat. 

Titan and me finally found ice cream!

After we came back, we finished the plastic shark and it just needed to print. I then decided to stay back and help the soap people as they had to cut and shape and package so many soaps. I tried to cut the soap, but I was really bad…it took me a while to learn where the blade actually was on the exact-o knife… And even that didn’t help. 

I then decided to work on packaging (after they tried to get me to write the pitch). Ching-Ching and I decided that beautiful gift wrapping packaging looked cool. This took a while to get going, but finally I was working on it with Jaspreet. It was assembly line dream team style. During this we ate some Kurkure and heard a rather heated conversation about how the pitch should go. It was a struggle. Most of the soap team was gone and now yeah… I tried to teach others, but it didn’t really work. Some yelling happened. We finished wrapping about 60 soaps by the end. Slept at almost 4am...

Packaging of Kadha soap

"Handmade by the local women of Kerala"

There are beautiful!

Day 22: MIT Make in India

Day 22: MIT Make in India

Nothing too interesting happened (read: I was too lazy to write an actual blog post), but I do have some interesting pictures...

I discovered the beauty of Gizoogle. And found Titan's new quote "Let there be light..." (I'll let her finish the rest). 

Random group hugs

Random group hugs

Chingy and her sad life

Daivon wore his lungi

We were really tired and sick...

Day 23: MIT Make in India

Day 23: MIT Make in India

After a night of staying up, we saw off Kristin at 3:30am. Gonna miss you Kristin! Now I can finally have your bed...

I couldn’t sleep that well, but woke up after a beautiful 2.5 hours to chole! And a gigantic flying bee/wasp on steroids thing. I ate breakfast in my room. With the door locked. And nearly ran out when I was done. Terrifying.

I made it to the lab alive and began working on making additional prototypes out of paper for our trash can ideas. I started with the waste segregation for recycling with my horrible artist skills. Duncan and I and a few others (but mostly Duncan) brainstormed the name for the food restrictions app. Duncan is making great progress!

Then a businessman, Shaji came and talked to us about his organic spice business. It was quite interesting to hear his life story and opinions about products and markets as well as taking note of his businessman ways. This lasted quite some time and contained some useful information for the future. 

We then broke for lunch, and I laid down for a bit. Afterwards my somewhat relaxing time, Duncan, Ching-Ching, and I went into the market to test and observe the food restrictions app and card he had made. Out of this came many interesting points that we didn’t really think about or didn’t focus on. The full notes are in Evernote, but some things I noticed (besides getting laughed at) was that the translated part was too long and took a lot of time from the shop owners, pictures with cross wasn’t that universal, the owners may not be able to respond back in English, and the phone app showing was a security issue. After the few bakeries we went back and wrote down our observations, and then when I came back, a courier was here. I apparently had a cake…? I read the note, and it was from my mother! Technically the cake wasn’t even for me but for the great friends I had made here. And there was the beautiful Cadbury fruit and nut chocolates!! People were convinced that it was my birthday…last month guys. 

Surprise for everyone from my mommy

I finished my prototype as did Forest and Deepika. Raj talked to our team about the lack of progress we were making, and so after that I began to enhance our previously written business plan, do more market research for another products and prices, and then start focusing more on the finance aspect of the business. This all happened while watching the score of Wimbledon final. (Djokovic beat Federer…I don’t want to talk about it). 

We went for dinner (meaning I went for nap). Then I drank (without straw so squeezed) a possibly expired juice box and came back to the lab to continue work on the finance part. I think our team’s plan for tomorrow (though Deepika left, and also wishes that we prototyped the portable toilet as the bus to Bangalore was not stopping) is to make a decent actual prototype and try to interact with kids. 

After some work and making Jaspreet mad about not touching the Frooti and Oreos (no one believes me that I made a pact with myself to never eat Oreos again years ago but strawberry ones don't count), Duncan made me go back so I could sleep (yet somehow it's nearly 2am...didn't work). Daivon was also leaving, so Daivon and Titan came back as well. Then I remembered...there's cake in the fridge... Our cooking person was sleeping in the kitchen...but the cake... Finally we made Daivon go get it, but of course we didn't get any utensils. For about 15 minutes, we stared at the cake. We nearly 3D printed a knife. 

We don't actually know what the point of this picture was.

Finally Duncan caved in and got his special knife. And then we cut the cake...into four pieces. 

I actually cut it.

And then we heard somebody outside knocking to come instead. First instinct, NOT THE CAKE. Duncan takes a piece and runs upstairs. I take the plate of cake and run upstairs. And Daivon...Daivon takes the whole freakin' box of cake upstairs. Titan, the kind one, opened the door and managed to slide into Daivon and Duncan's room without too much suspicion. We laughed so hard. Like, so hard. 

The plate and the whole box...all in their room now.

Some great memories.

After we calmed down, we ate the cake happily. It was all right, but in the moment, it was absolutely delicious. Great way for Daivon to leave with. We ended up eating nearly half the cake among the four of us, but no regrets. Until we heard everyone coming up and knocking on the locked door. 

We quickly licked our fingers and hid the cake under the bed. And for some reason, Daivon thought of the genius idea to take the plate and hide himself in the bathroom. We let everyone in (Daivon still chillin' in the bathroom), and turns out his car to the airport was here. Daivon finally came out, hiding the plate in the towel (though it was pretty obvious there was a plate in there). We all talked and he showered, and I told everyone that we finished all the cake when they wanted to cut it, which made them super angry and me happy. No one saw the cake!

Finally we went downstairs, but Daivon had missed his car. I pissed off more people (one of my true talents). Then we decided to bring down "the last piece" for Forest as he wasn't the one who wanted cake in front of everybody. Fantastic. We saw Daivon off, and then I decided it was time to bring down the rest of the cake. I actually wouldn't have shown the rest the cake, but I didn't want to put it back in the fridge, so I had to. I also distributed the chocolate. They all thought my mom was the sweetest ever (which she is) and I was probably the meanest. Oh well. I had a good ending to the day. Because who doesn't love cake.